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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Every time I go into the city, one of the kids gets hurt. It's a rule or something. I was downtown for an Adventures by Disney event the evening Lexi broke her arm. I got a call from the school nurse while on the train heading down for a luncheon. Lexi hurt her knee and Joe took her to the ER while I was downtown for dinner. I'm scheduled to leave for Chicago tomorrow evening, but just to keep me on my toes, Jackson didn't want to wait until I left. He got hurt tonight.

He climbed up onto Lexi's loft bed to bug her talk to her. She didn't like this and gave him a shove asked him to leave. He stumbled from the bed and landed in a pool. A Polly Pocket pool, that is. See exhibit A..

Being the awesome, caring, concerned mother I am, I said something along the lines of, "Is he really hurt or just crying because he scraped himself?"

"He's really hurt!" they chimed, all freaked-out-like.

I hurried to Lexi's room where Jackson lay, holding his foot, writhing in pain and screaming. Now, first you need to know that Jackson tends to be overly dramatic with injuries. A little skinned knee can elicit screams of horror movie proportions.

I took a look at his foot, after I pried his hands away, and saw a pretty deep gash. (Now this is where I make up for my deficiency in handling puke). I calmly said, "Hon, I need to take you to the hospital to have this looked at. I think you're going to need stitches. I probably shouldn't have mentioned "stitches" to Jackson who immediately started crying and freaking out. I calmed him down and assured him it would be ok. If he did end up needing stitches, they'd give him something to numb his foot and it would be fine.

Fast forward to the ER. We walked in (or more like I walked in and Jax hopped in on one foot) and the first person we saw was the mom of one of Jackson's best friends. She ushered us right into the ER where we were seen right away. On the way to our room we ran across Joe's cousin and the mom of another one of Jackson's friends. It was like a little reunion or something.

So they numbed it, cleaned it, and stitched it up and all the while Jackson screamed bloody murder. They didn't give him a shot to numb his foot and just relied on the cream to numb it enough for stitches. It didn't do the trick. Although with Jackson, it's hard to tell because he will scream like he's being brutally beaten simply because he sees a needle. A nurse came in and tried to distract him by asking him all sorts of questions. "Do you play sports? What sports do you play? What position do you play? What's your favorite team? Who's your favorite player? Are you a Cubs fan or a Sox fan? Do you know the routine "Who's on First"? And on and on and on. Meanwhile, Jackson's just screaming his head off and hyperventilating and sweating. At one point, I'm pretty sure I saw his head rotate 360 degrees. I was afraid he was going to projectile vomit pea soup at the poor nurse with the running questions if she didn't shut up.

Somehow they finished, and 6 stitches and a snazzy special shoe later, he was free to go. The only problem is he can't put weight on his foot right now. The cut was smack dab in the middle of the bottom of his foot. Ouchie. And the worst part is the "No swimming for 2 weeks" order.

OK, hopefully we're done for a while and no one else gets injured while I'm at BlogHer.

29 comments:

Poor Jackson. The bottom of the foot must be the worse place for a cut needing stitches. The only way to baby the spot is to stay put in one place. Not a pleasant duty for him. I wish him a speedy recovery.

Poor guy! Do you think he'll try to get out of bathing since he can't swim, which in his mind means it can't get wet? It seems whenever my husband goes to China (which is quite often), *something* happens. Car won't start, A/C breaks, someone needs a trip to the ER, etc. It's sort of joke, but not a very funny one. He's there now and I'm just waiting to see what it will be this time.

Damn that Polly and her evil friends leaving the pool right where Jackson would land on it.

Hope to see you at Blogher. I will try to fight through the crowds around you!

As far as Ford, I would imagine automatic doors, lots of cup holders, a big trash can, a big basket inbetween the 2 front seats to store all my stuff/crap.... Oh and one of those limo windows to close off the noise from the backseat!

Poor Jackson! Getting stitches HURTS! Or at least, the one time I had them, it did--the whole area around it was in some kind of shock so you couldn't even touch the skin with a tissue without causing major pain. At least it's over and he'll be whining to go to the pool soon cuz it feels all better! LOL!

Poor guy! We had the same experience last summer with my daughter. She was in the kitchen and started yelling that she cut her foot. Being ever so caring, I tried to ascertain just how much she was hurt before dragging myself off the computer....which I felt bad about when I saw the blood pouring out of her foot. Our ER did their best to numb her foot up with several shots but she still claimed she could feel it and had to be physically restrained by my husband the entire time.This of course happened the day before we were leaving for our annual vacation to spend 2 weeks playing on a river. Such great timing! (btw, water proof bandages and such are NOT water proof)

"...At one point, I'm pretty sure I saw his head rotate 360 degrees. I was afraid he was going to projectile vomit pea soup at the poor nurse with the running questions..." That's just awesome and hilarious! Yet...not. Sorry about his injury. That had to have hurt.

My son is like that! He thinks he's dying from an ache or a hangnail. So imagine my surprise when the neighbor brings him to my door one day saying, You need to call 911. My son's standing there w/arm wrapped in towel, barely crying. Turns out he really did need 911, even ended up in surgery. But didn't really react until he saw blood drip off the towel, then he passed out.

Nice, my younger brother at 3 stepped on a juice glass (dont ask why a glass was sitting in the middle of the floor, i am sure you understand) and ripped the bottom of his big toe off. It was so bad that they had to take a skin graph from his calf to fix it! He was in a full leg cast and a wheelechair! AT 3 YEARS OLD! Hoping Jax doesn't give you too much trouble!

I totally feel his pain! Literally, I have done something similar. I was on top of a cabinet trying to get something down and when I stepped back down onto the floor, I stepped right onto one of my kids headphone jack plugins....right into the bottom of my foot! I ended up in the ER too and couldn't walk for weeks! Poor little guy, I hope he feels better soon!

I remember when my daughter ripped her fingernail off and they sewed it up right in front of her face where she could see it. Then the doctor yelled at her for screaming, I passed out, and later the doctor told her that maybe when she's older she'll be brave.

Have I mentioned I used to trust doctors until my children started seeing them?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no place in this universe for the Land of Polly Pockets. Now it turns out that they are really dangerous (forget about all the boring lead and magnets a few years ago-am I the only one whose daughters STILL wouldn't get rid of them?) It has to be one of the only gifts that parents never buy for their own children - but always for a birthday present!

Oh my, feel so lucky we never went through stitches, but I remember the cat scan after fainting on the playground, and the terror of the time she drove her face straight into a tree in front of my eyes her first time on a bicycle (sometimes I think the marriage takes a bigger hit than the child with "who was responsible for that one...")--and am totally amazed we've come to her adulthood (oh my...) relatively unscathed and relatively trauma-free (though I'm always on the lookout and just "know" it's all buried somewhere). Thanks for this wonderful blog and your great sense of humor. Sincerely, Rori Raye

Wow. That reminds me of the great night light incident of 2008. My son Gabe figured out how to remove the "safety cover" from the night light and broke the bulb. Yeah, fun. No stitches just the pad missing from his middle finger on his right hand. Lots of screaming and crying. Okay, maybe some came from me ;)

Oh poor guy! We had a similar incident in our house last December. My then 7 year old kept launching himself onto his bed and bouncing up into the air. I told him to stop because 1. He was making too much noise and I was trying to get his little brother to sleep and 2. He was probably going to get hurt. Yep, one more running launch of his body on to the bed and I hear a huge thud and screaming. I am thinking "How bad can it be, his bed is only about 18 inches off the ground (just a box spring and mattress at the moment, no bed frame). Well I go in and he is holding his knee, crying. I finally get a look at it and his jammies are all ripped and there is blood everywhere. I start to get a little freaked and keep repeating "What did you do?" over and over again. All the poor kid can finally get out due to the pain is one word "Stratego". Yeah, he flew off the bed and landed right on top of his Stratego game which he had all set up to play at the foot of his bed. He shattered one of the little castle piece guy things with his knee cap. No wonder it hurt so much...I cringe at the thought when just banging your knee cap dead on hurts so much. So I have to get my MIL to come over to stay with my youngest since DH is always gone on a business trip when we have a crisis. Our hospital trip was much better than yours though because for some lucky reason I have very stoic children and he hardly flinched when they shot the numbing stuff right into the puncture wound on his knee! I could tell it really hurt but he didn't make a peep. Then once it was numb, he insisted on watching the whole stitching job! The worst part? We had just had no school for a week due to an ice storm and school was just opening up the next day and he injures himself and ends up home for another day!

Sounds exactly like something my son would do although he only uses his head for serious injuries. He has been glued twice and stapled once. With the stapling my husband forced the doctor to rub his head down with the numbing cream first rather than do the numbing shots. The doctor swore that would not work and brought the needle in for 'when' that wouldn't work. Sure enough after sitting for 30 minutes Doc came in with the stapler and proceeded to put 3 in without any pain to my son. So yeah, I'm thinking Jackson was full of it. =) Then again, could've been a different numbing cream. My husband liked that the nurse just grinned after the skeptical doc left and said she'd remember that for next time.

Love your homage to Indiana Jones in the title of this post! (has anyone else noticed that a good deal of your injury stories have a reference to Harrison Ford in them? Lexi and the garage door and all...I'm just sayin'...)

so thats how you avoid excess waiting in an ER, know someone! i bet all the people you jumped past were THRILLED. dont get me wrong, if given that opportunity i would definately take it (esp with a crying child) but i guess i disagree that it should happen.

I can totally relate to the screaming and carrying on. My son also has incredible stamina when it comes to crying. It's like he doesn't realize the pain has subsided and he just keeps on screaming.

However, he comes by it naturally because I'm a bit of a screamer, too. I needed a couple of stitches to repair a tear from childbirth, and I screamed more for the two little stitches than I did during childbirth (it was a "natural" birth)!